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Feature Four Frames

Four Frames: revisiting The Game, David Fincher’s under the radar thriller

The Game is a film about awareness and relationships, with Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas), a wealthy businessman protagonist who keeps the world at a considered distance. Van Orton reduces almost all relationships to services – an that fits the capitalist economy in which he operates. His world is constructed of near-hermetically sealed spheres: the private […]

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Feature Four Frames

Four Frames: Split (M. Night Shyamalan, 2016)

(Warning: This article contains plot spoilers) M. Night Shyamalan has undergone an identity crisis. The writer, director, and bit-part ‘actor’ of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs and The Village came something of a mid-career cropper. With his subsequent movies failing to impress, Shyamalan went from being the new master of suspense and king of the […]

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Feature Music & Film

Music & Film: Dueling Banjos

Neil Mitchell takes a trip into the American backwoods, where the spontaneous rendition of a musical ditty provides a tuneful, striking contrast to the events that follow in a classic ‘70s thriller. Film history is littered with iconic music, both original compositions and existing pieces co-opted to complement, contradict or heighten the emotional reaction to […]

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Feature Four Frames

Four Frames: 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2002)

The zombie film was, to excuse the pun, a sub-genre that had flatlined at the turn of the century. Movies thrown together by hacks with low budgets and even lower ambitions had consigned the undead to the DVD shelves. What this sub-section of horror needed was an injection of life, and British genre-spanning director Danny […]

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Feature Music & Film Widescreen

The Score: Jaws (Composer: John Williams, 1975)

Neil Mitchell dips a tentative toe in the water as one of the most famous theme tunes in movie history runs through his mind. Duun dun…duun dun…dun dun dun dun…you’d be hard pressed to find anyone – cinephile or casual movie viewer – that doesn’t instantly recognise John Williams’ theme tune to Jaws (Steven Spielberg, […]

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Feature Four Frames

Four Frames: JFK (Oliver Stone, 1990)

Jean-Luc Godard once remarked that ‘cinema is truth 24 times a second… and every cut is a lie.’ The silent, grainy footage shot by Abraham Zapruder on November 22, 1963 as US President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas lasts less than 30 seconds, features no cuts, and provides the ‘truth’ […]

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Feature One Sheet

One Sheet: Infernal Affairs (Wai-keung Lau, 2002)

The philosophical and religious overtones of Infernal Affairs(2002) are captured beautifully in the one-sheet that accompanied the Chinese theatrical release. That the identity of the men silhouetted at the centre is obscured forms a very telling statement about the lonely and troubled characters of Chan Wing-yan (Tony Leung), an undercover cop who infiltrates a triad gang, […]

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Feature Four Frames

Four Frames: No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)

Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) has become one of the most iconic bad guys in cinema history.  With his penchant for quiet weaponry and disquieting conversation, the character takes on a mythic quality that reads to both the audience and the inhabitants of the film as an unstoppable force of evil, an angel of death, or, perhaps, […]

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Feature On Location

On Location: In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, 2008)

“It’s a fucking fairytale town, isn’t it? How can a fairytale town not be somebody’s fucking thing?” asks Ralph Fiennes’ cockney gangster Harry (Ralph Finnes) in Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges. A favourite childhood retreat of Harry’s, Bruges is the hideout to which he has sent hitmen Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) after Ray’s […]